I remember the day I met with my surgeon for the initial consultation after being diagnosed. I felt his energy to be kind and caring and there seemed to be an opening in him towards both Frank and I. During our consultation I told him I was not afraid to die, but was afraid of what he wanted to do to keep me alive. I could see a light come on inside him, where he then looked at Frank curiously and concerned, and Frank replied: “no, no, she has looked into this, she knows what she is saying”. And with that he smiled at me with a sense of liberation and a heaviness lifted and said “Gosh I'm so pleased to hear that! For most people it is the other way round, they want me to save them from death of which I cannot, but I can do my best to keep them alive.” And the day shortly following where I meet with the Oncologist, who told me a woman in my condition, at the very least should be taking Tamoxifen if nothing else. So I asked "what would be the purpose of taking this?” and he replied “just in case cancer were to spread to your other breast as well” and I responded, “thank you, but I don't live just in case, and I particularly don't want to put a drug in my body just in case… I shall take my chances, and face that should it ever happen".
At the same time in those early days whilst Spirit made its full bodied descent down into me I remember balmy September evenings lying naked at 2am in our backyard down by our little stream. As I lay there with my legs wide open reaching deeply from within down into my womb, I spoke silently yet wildly: “Mrs Moon, Mrs Moon, fill me with your bright white golden healing light”, the depth of vitality and undefined vastness that was me as I spoke these words indescribable. All the while I was embodying this forsaken truth - ‘I am this Life, there is no Death’.
The initial phase of healing, and there have been many, seemed the most difficult and arduous of them all as I started to clear what I knew to be generational pathology, generational suffering. Our ancestral DNA that gets passed down through family lineage and sits in our cells like an insidious virus affecting and infecting our psyche's, our bodies and our unconscious behaviors. Often cancer is gestating in the womb. I was clearing the 'living dead' from within myself, none of them me. My mother's suffering and pain was the initial ring leader. I could feel her, all that in essence she was not, yet embodied in her life due to neglected trauma and pain, as it is for us all. I had a great love of my mother and took her on at the age of 4 - I became her husband. This type of suffering, the 'sins of the fathers' is sticky, pervasive and the hardest to shift for us all. Because it is not us, yet dwells within us as unconsciousness itself. This is the real foundation for changing our DNA. It was very hard for me being in any form of relationship at this time, I was alive only to myself. I had nothing to give to anyone, even had I wanted to, which I did not. All my energy was totally engaged in this choiceless process of cutting ties with generational dysfunction (the past) appearing as me. Sometimes love is a fierce embrace of Life. My psyche felt so bereft of Life, and my mind in a state of anarchy and disarray. Looking back I was probably deeply depressed, my mother's depression, of which she often took barbiturates for. Pretty little speckled pills hiding in her bedroom drawer of which I would often admire as a child. I wrote this piece in my journal during this period about the relationship between Frank and I. It was a time of great personal intimacy for we both, within our own psyche’s and hearts as we were asked to let go and allow love lead anew. Not from foregone identification, conditioning or concept, but enter the mystery of Love from a place of absence, innocence and incertitude. An opportunity to love without looking for result, an opportunity disguised as loss, that in time ripened to become a blessed relief and liberation for we both.
"Frank and I are in the winter of our relationship. I am cold and contracted a lot of the time towards him. Holding on to nothing which is frightening to any projection my mind may have into the future. All I have is a thin golden thread of ‘absent knowledge’ that we are here together and it is where I am now."
When I first got diagnosed the brokenness of those initial days had me one day say to a friend: “why, what have I done wrong that this would happen to me”, as my mind anxiously scrambled to make sense of one moment in time that was a part of many others, to make known the unknown, to find a why so my mind could fix it. I saw in that moment how the cultural conditioning of my early religious days and much of my adult life spent deeply devoted to what I had now come to see as a conceptual, patriarchal and intransigent spiritual teaching, gave rise to this statement of shame and self-abuse. It is often in our moments of deep brokenness and vulnerability where all belonging disappears, our psyches split open to the light of awareness, and there we catch a glimpse of what lies deep within our unconscious.
There have been many moments of profound and illuminating healing that followed this initial phase, each imperative to this crossing over, and pivotal to the melody of this love song. I see how each was interconnected, integrated and woven together in perfect sequence and harmony. Each phase of healing has been a profound emptying out followed by a deep refining and re-integration process, the final and most rigorous being the physical, as my body sought to realign itself with my psyche. I was bringing through into my humanity that which had been transcended.
I am reminded of a verse from a song by Ray Lamontagne called 'Empty' .
Well, I looked my demons in the eyes
laid bare my chest, said "Do your best destroy me.
You see, I've been to hell and back so many times,
I must admit you kind of bore me"
The depth of gratitude for this most powerful and alchemical of Spirits I call cancer having entered my life is immeasurable and unnameable in words. Words would only sully the pure experience and sense of divine blessing that today, and each day, inhabits my heart. There may be some wanting to know have I healed cancer, and for that I have no definitive answer in the absence of any medical testing, it was never about cancer. I am here ‘Now’ - along with a recognition and embodiment of the Principal of Life, whether in this physical body or not, which for me has been liberating. Have I healed the imbalance within that cancer brought undeniably to my attention?, yes, and more. I am no longer the woman who entered this journey in ways simple and profound. By laying claim to all areas of trauma, energetic dysfunction and conceptual conditioning whether personal, cultural, spiritual or otherwise, my cells now vibrate to a new and authentic tune not one filled with other peoples notes and rhythms. Where once my energy would move to meet others, it now remains still and immutable. Many things now pass me by that are not an energetic match, but what is ‘for me’ remains, and is not connected to a thought process. I’m still deeply drawn to help and serve others in their life, nothing gives me more pleasure, but not unconsciously at the expense of my own. Yet, the greatest revolution that has come from this, which I continue to observe, is the abiding and choiceless alignment with Presence, Spirit and Soul intelligence as the supreme power here. This original divine substance is my inner compass and most truthful, gentle advisory beyond this dream. This has been most comforting should my egoic conditioning become confused, or destitute as it did in the early days when viewing this 'vacant lot' that was once so alive with the experience of itself and the endless need to ‘Do’. Now there is an absence of drive or energy to materialize and manifest as is our ‘insatiable’ conditioning, but to simply allow and align to what connects me with peace, beauty, and my inner sense of creativity. A life of paying attention rather than setting intentions. When our 'get up and go has got up and gone' we can probably assume we are on the right track. Life, as this cosmic creative potential, always knows were to find us in ways extraordinary and unimaginable. This is by no means a disengagement nor indifference towards community, worldly or planetary issues - the days of sitting around contemplating our voids and our gurus are over and have clearly shown their flaws. Sometimes the unimaginable is full engagement with what calls us from a sense of personal responsibility.
I share this as a blueprint for true healing, in faith that in time as a conscious responsible humanity we will live from the inside out, where our first response to healing will be to look within to where Life, this timeless Spirit wisdom and presence resides. To embrace it as ‘Thee power’, our innate power to heal not just our bodies but our lives. We are each our own unique fingerprint of God - as within so without. Our human awareness is poised and ready for a more fulfilling connection to Mother Nature, to the Universe, and to ourselves as this Divine principal. All illness and disease at its deepest core is a 'poverty of Spirit’, where body and Being are at odds with each other. A ‘disunion’ within us from source energy - the natural, nature-all intelligence that in truth we are, and everything here arises out of. This has nothing to do with intellect, but enters a tangible cosmic dimension within us. Until we start to bring ‘presence to our pathology’, disease and disharmony will continue to populate and hold dominion over our bodies, our psyches and our planet. Backwards is the new forwards! Just as wealth has nothing to do with money, nor is our connection to Spirit dependent on anything money can buy, or on any external source - it transcends all materialism and possession. It is never our spiritual body that needs healing by one more workshop, guru, soul-mate, success story, pill or potion - it is always resplendent and whole. It is our effortless and silent appreciation of what we are naturally born into that is its nourishment, deeply our own, and our Mother Earth's. This inner provence uses the circumstances of our life to gain our attention. How attentive, open and willing we are to enter stillness - the ground of self inquiry, wisdom, and our natural body, this then becomes the depth of our realization and ultimate well-being. Once you see what is in the way, the way is clear, and it's already done - what's 'in the way is the way'. Here we bring Life into living, within ourselves, within our lives, and within the collective consciousness. The more we can bring harmony and Oneness to ourselves, it is this which will guide and produce Oneness in our world. This is true healing, and the greatest offering of our life.
We cannot do this until we stop running from Death, be it psychological or physical, but instead befriend death's divine potential for transformation and transmutation of our bodies, minds and psyches with an understanding that any pain or confusion serves as motivation to enter our hearts more deeply and embrace the healing power of Spirit that resides within us all. When we truly embrace death being both the end, and beginning of a new cycle of life, in any of its myriad of forms, this is the bedrock of our soul’s evolution and our restoration. We are then free to whole heartedly embrace Life in the knowledge that WE are this most powerful Divine substance, and this our potential to heal whatever is seeking to be restored and liberated within us. All pain needs to be witnessed, with acceptance and compassion - we feel it to heal it. It is in our darkest moments where love draws closest to us, and is a most powerful catalyst in pushing up and forward what is waiting within to be made conscious and set free. These are moments of ceremony and initiation, where we are being divinely ushered to greet a new, more harmonious and vital place of presence within us. If we become still enough, present and accepting of what is, we will intuit this is love doing it, and be guided through our own unique process. These are not our darkest of times, but our brightest and most Divine of moments where we are given the opportunity to transmute matter (our pain and dis-ease, our greatest teachers) to consciousness, to Light and Liberation.
Lest we forget that Life is always happening for us, and can never be against us, because we are this Life itself. As we turn tragedy to triumph, these are our greatest of successes, and our only true momentary purpose for being. Our most enduring of love songs!
Finally, I finish with a bow in reverence, and heart felt recognition, to each my brother and sister who has gone before and after me, and been altered by this mighty alchemical Spirit called cancer. No matter what passage you have chosen to walk, or has chosen you, I am with you always, and in all ways, in Love.
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May we each 'begin' with our inner garden and bring that nectar to the world,
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One Vision
Day and night, no difference.
The sun *is* the moon: An amalgam.
Their gold and silver melt together.
This is the season when
the dead branch and the green branch
are the same branch.
Nightmares fill with light like a holiday.
Humans and angels speak one language.
The elusive ones finally meet.
Good and evil, dead and alive,
everything blooms
from one natural stem.
You know this already, I'll stop.
Any direction you turn
it's one vision.
-- Rumi --
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